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DROLLS 

FROM SHADOWLAND 











DROLLS 

FROM SHADOWLAND 


B Y 


J. TI. PEARCE 

Author of" Esther Pentreath," “Inconsequent Lives” 
“ Jaco Treloar&c. 





NEW YORK 

MACMILLAN AND CO. 

1893. 

All rights reserved. 

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9 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


The Man who Coined his 

Blood 

into 


Gold. 



I 

An Unexpected Journey 


• 

*5 

The Man who Could Talk with 

THE 


Birds. 

. 


27 

The Pursuit .... 



39 

A Pleasant Entertainment 



49 

The Man who Desired to be 

a Tree 


61 

The Man who Had Seen 



73 

The Unchristened Child . 



85 

The Man who Met Hate . 



95 

The Haunted House 



109 

Gifts and Awards . 



n 9 

Friend or Foe? 



133 

The Fields of Amaranth . 


. 

145 

The Comedy of a Soul. 



155 














THE MAN WHO COINED HIS 
BLOOD INTO GOLD. 


£ 





THE MAN WHO COINED HIS 
BLOOD INTO GOLD. 

The yoke of Poverty galled him exceed¬ 
ingly, and he hated his taskmistress with a 
most rancorous hatred. 

As he climbed up or down the dripping 
ladders, descending from sollar to sollar 
towards the level where he worked, he 
would set his teeth grimly that he might 
not curse aloud—an oath underground 
being an invitation to the Evil One—but 
in his heart the muffled curses were 
audible enough. And when he was at 
work in the dreary level, with the darkness 


B 2 


4 Drolls from Shadowland. 

lying on his shoulder like a hand, and the 
candles shining unsteadily through the 
gloom, like little evil winking eyes, he 
brooded so moodily over his bondage to 
Poverty, that he desired to break from it 
at any cost. 

“ I’d risk a lem for its weight in gowld : 
darned ef I wedn’! ” he muttered savagely, 
as he dug at the stubborn rock with his 
pick. 

He could hear the sounds of blasting in 
other levels—the explosions travelling to 
him in a muffled boom—and above him, 
for he was working beneath the bed of 
the ocean, he could faintly distinguish the 
grinding of the sea as the huge waves 
wallowed and roared across the beach. 

“ I’m sick to death o’ this here life,” he 
grumbled; “I’d give a haand or a’ eye 
for a pot o’ suvrins. Iss, I’d risk more 


Drolls from Shadowland. 5 

than that,” he added darkly : letting the 
words ooze out as if under his breath. 

At that moment his pick detached a 
piece of rock which came crashing down 
on the floor of the level, splintering 
into great jagged fragments as it fell. 

He started back with an exclamation of 
uncontrollable surprise. The falling rock 
had disclosed the interior of a cavern 
whose outlines were lost in impenetrable 
gloom, but which here and there in a 
vague fashion, as it caught the light of the 
candle flickering in his hat, seemed to 
sparkle as if its walls were crusted with 
silver. 

“ Lor’ Jimmeny, this es bra’ an’ queer ! ” 
he gasped. 

As he leaned on his pick, peering into 
the cavern with covetous eyes, but with a 
wildly-leaping heart, he was aware of an 


6 Drolls from Shadowland. 

odd movement among the shadows which 
were elusively outlined by the light of his 
dip. 

It was almost as though some of them 
had an independent individuality, and 
could have detached themselves from 
their roots if they wished. 

It was certain a squat, hump-backed 
blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a 
misshapen block, was either wriggling on 
the floor as if trying to stand upright .... 
or else there was something wrong with 
his eyes. 

He stared at the wavering gloom in the 
cavern, with its quaint, angular splashes of 
glister, where heads of quartz and patches 
of mundic caught the light from the 
unsteady flame of the candle, and 
presently he was certain that the shadows 
were alive. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 7 

Most of all he was sure that the little 
hump-backed oddity had risen to its feet 
and was a veritable creature : an actual 
uncouth, shambling grotesque, instead of 
a mere flat blotch of shadow. 

Up waddled the little hump-back to the 
hole in the wall where Joel stood staring, 
leaning on his pick. 

“ What can I do for’ee, friend ? ” he 
asked huskily : his voice sounding faint, 
hoarse, and muffled, as if it were coming 
from an immense distance, or as if the 
squat little frame had merely borrowed it 
for the nonce. 

Joel stared at the speaker, with his 
lower jaw dropping. 

“ What can I do for’ee, friend ? ” asked 
the hump-back; peering at the grimy, 
half-naked miner, with his little ferrety 
eyes glowing luminously. 


8 Drolls from Shadowland. 

Joel moistened his lips with his tongue 
before he answered. “Nawthin’, plaise, 
sir,” he gasped out, quakingly. 

“ Nonsense, my man ! ” said the hump¬ 
back pleasantly, rubbing his hands cheer¬ 
fully together as he spoke. And Joel 
noticed that the fingers, though long and 
skinny—almost wrinkled and lean enough, 
in fact, to pass for claws—were adorned 
with several sparkling rings. “Nonsense, 
my man ! I’m your friend—if you’ll let me 
be. O never mind my hump, if it’s that 
that’s frightening you, I got that through 
a fall a long while ago,” and the lean brown 
face puckered into a smile. “ Come ! In 
what way can I oblige ’ee, friend ? I can 
grant you any wish you like. Say the 
word—and it’s done ! Just think what you 
could do if you had heaps of money, now— 
piles of suvrins in that owld chest in your 


Drolls from Shadowland. 9 

bedroom, instead o’ they paltry two-an’- 
twenty suvrins which you now got heeded 
away in the skibbet,” 

Joel stared at the speaker with distended 
eyes: the great beads of perspiration 
gathering on his forehead. 

“ How ded’ee come to knaw they was 
there ? ” he asked. 

“I knaw more than that,” said the 
hump-back, laughing. “ I could tell’ee a 
thing or two, b’leeve, if I wanted to. I 
knaw tin,* cumraade, as well as the next.” 
And with that he began to chuckle to 
himself. 

“Wedn’ee like they two-an’-twenty 
suvrins in the skibbet made a hunderd-an’- 


* To “ knaw tin ” is among the miners of Cornwall 
a sign of, and a colloquial euphemism for, clever¬ 
ness . 



io Drolls from Shadowland. 


twenty?” asked the hump-back insinua- 
tingly. 

“ Iss, by Gosh, I should ! ” said Joel. 

“ Then gi’me your haand on it, curn- 
raade ; an’ you shall have ’em ! ” 

“Here goes, then !” said Joel, thrusting 
out his hand. 

The hump-back seized the proffered 
hand in an instant, covering the grimy 
fingers with his own lean claws. 

“ Oh, le’go ! le'go l ” shouted Joel. 

The hump-back grinned; his black eyes 
glittering 

“I waan’t be niggardly to’ee, cumraade,” 
said he. “ Every drop o’ blood you 
choose to shed for the purpose shall turn 
into a golden suvrin for’ee—there ! ” 

“ Darn’ee! thee ben an’ run thy nails 
in me—see ! ” 

And Joel shewed a drop of blood 
oozing from his wrist. 


Drolls from Shadowland. n 

“Try the charm, man ! Wish ! Hold 
un out, an’ say, Wan ! ” 

Joel held out his punctured wrist 
mechanically. 

“Wan ! ” 

There was a sudden gleam—and down 
dropped a sovereign : a bright gold coin 
that rang sharply as it fell. 

“ Try agen ! ” said the hump-back, 
grinning delightedly. 

Joel stooped first to pick up the coin, 
and bit it eagerly. 

“ Ay, good Gosh! ’tes gowld, sure 
’nuff!” 

“Try agen!” said the hump-back 
“ Make up a pile ! ” 

Joel held out his wrist and repeated the 
formula. 

“Wan !” 

And another coin clinked at his feet. 


12 Drolls from Shadowland. 

“ I needn’ wait no longer, s’pose ? ” said 
the hump-back. 

“ Wan ! ” cried Joel. And a third coin 
dropped. 

He leaned on his pick and kept coin¬ 
ing his blood eagerly, till presently there 
was quite a little pile at his feet. 

The hump-back watched him intently 
for a time: but Joel appeared to be 
oblivious of his presence ; and the squat 
little figure stealthily disappeared. 

The falling coins kept chiming melodi¬ 
ously, till presently the great stalwart 
miner had to lean against the wall of the 
level to support himself. So tired as he 
was, he had never felt before. But give 
over his task he either could not, or would 
not. The chink of the gold-pieces he must 
hear if he died for it. He looked down at 
them greedily. “Wan! . . . . Wan! . . . . 
Wan!....” 





Drolls from Shadowland. 13 

Presently he tottered, and fell over on 
his heap. 

At that same moment the halting little 
hump-back stole out from the shadows 
immediately behind him, and leaned over 
Joel, rubbing his hands gleefully. 

“ I must catch his soul,” said the little 
black man. 

And with that he turned Joel’s head 
round sharply, and held his hand to the 
dying man’s mouth. 

Just then there fluttered up to Joel’s 
lips a tiny yellow flame, which, for some 
reason or other, seemed as agitated as if 
it had a human consciousness. One might 
almost have imagined it perceived the 
little hump-back, and knew full well who 
and what he was. 

But there on Joel’s lips the flame hung 
quivering. And now a deeper shadow fell 
upon his face. 


14 Drolls from Shadow land. 

Surely the tiny thing shuddered with 
horror as the hump-back’s black paws 
closed upon it! 

But, in any case, it now was safely 
prisoned. And the little black man 
laughed long and loudly. 

“Not so bad a bargain after all! ” 
chuckled he. 


AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. 



AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. 

The performance was over : the curtain 
had descended and the spectators had 
dispersed. 

There had been a slight crush at the 
doors of the theatre, and what with the 
abrupt change from the pleasant warmth 
and light of the interior to the sharp chill 
of the night outside, Preston shivered, 
and a sudden weakness smote him at the 
joints. 

The crowd on the pavement in front of 
the theatre melted away with unexam¬ 
pled rapidity, in fact, seemed almost to 

c 



18 Drolls from Shadozvland. 

waver and disappear as if the mise en seine 
had changed in some inexplicable way. 

A hansom drove up, and Preston 
stepped into it heavily, glancing 
drowsily askance at the driver as he did 
so. 

Seated up there, barely visible in the 
gloom, the driver had an almost grisly 
aspect, humped with waterproof capes, 
and with such a lean, white face. Preston, 
as he glanced at him, shivered again. 

The trap-door above him opened softly, 
and the colourless face peered down at 
him curiously. 

“Where to, sir?” asked the hollow 
voice. 

Preston leaned back wearily. “Home,” 
he replied. 

It did not strike him as anything 
strange or unusual, that the driver asked 


Drolls from Shadowland. 19 

no questions but drove off without a word. 
He was very weary, and he wanted to 
rest. 

The sleepless hum of the city was abid¬ 
ingly in his ears, and the lamps that dotted 
the misty pavements stared at him blink- 
ingly all along the route. The tall black 
buildings rose up grimly into the night; 
the faces that flitted to and fro along the 
pavements, kept ever sliding past him, 
melting into the darkness; and the cabs 
and ’buses, still astir in the streets, had 
a ghostly air as they vanished in the 
gloom. 

Preston lay back, weary in every joint, 
a drowsy numbness settling on his pulse. 
He had faith in his driver: he would 
bring him safely home. 

Presently they were at one of the 
wharves beside the river: Preston could 


c 2 


20 Drolls from Shadowland. 

hear the gurgle of the water around the 
piles. 

Not this way had he' ever before gone 
homeward. He looked out musingly on 
the swift, black stream. 

“Justin time: we can go down with 
the tide,” said a voice. 

Preston would have uttered some pro¬ 
test, but this sluggishness overpowered 
him: it was as if he could neither lift 
hand nor foot. The inertia of indifference 
had penetrated into his bones. 

Presently he was aware that he had 
entered a barge that lay close against the 
wharf, heaving on the tide. And, as if it 
were all a piece of the play, the lean old 
driver, with his dead-white face, had the 
oars in his hands and stood quietly facing 
him, guiding the dark craft down the 
stream. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 21 

The panorama of the river-bank kept 
changing and shifting in the most inexplic¬ 
able manner, and Preston was aware of a 
crowd of pictures ever coming and going 
before his eyes: as if some subtle magician, 
standing behind his shoulder, were project¬ 
ing for him, on the huge black screen of 
night, the most marvellous display of 
memories he had ever contemplated. For 
they were all memories, or blends of 
memories, that now rose here on the 
horizon of his consciousness. There was 
nothing new in essentials presented to him: 
but the grouping was occasionally novel to 
a fault. 

The dear old home—the dear old folks ! 
Green hills, with the little white-washed 
cottage in a dimple of them, and in the 
foreground the wind-fretted plain of the 
sea. The boyish games—marbles and 


22 Drolls from Shadowland. 

hoop-trundling—and the coming home at 
dusk to the red-lighted kitchen, where the 
mother had the tea ready on the table and 
the sisters sat at their knitting by the fire. 

The dear, dear mother! how his pulse 
yearned towards her ! there were tears in 
his eyes as he thought of her now. Yet, 
all the same, the quiet of his pulse was 
profound. 

And there was the familiar scenery of 
his daily life : the ink-stained desks, the 
brass rails for the books, the ledgers and 
bank-books, and the files against the walls ; 
and the faces of his fellow-clerks (even the 
office boy) depicted here before him to 
the very life. 

The wind across the waters blew chilly 
in his face: he shivered, a numbness 
settling in his limbs. 

His sweet young wife, so loving and 


Drolls from Shadow land. 23 

gentle—how shamefully he had neglected 
her, seeking his own pleasure selfishly— 
there she sat in the familiar chair by the 
fireside with dear little Daisy dancing on 
her knee. What a quiet, restful interior it 
was ! He wondered : would they miss him 
much if he were dead ? . . . . Above all, 
would little Daisy understand what it 
meant when some one whispered to her 
“favee is dead ” ? 

The wavering shadows seemed to 
thicken around the boat. And the figure 
at the oars—how lean and white it was: 
and yet it seemed a good kind of fellow, 
too, he thought. Preston watched it 
musingly as the stream bore them onward : 
the rushing of the water almost lulling him 
to sleep. 

Were they sweeping outward, then, to 
the unknown sea ? 


24 Drolls from Shadowland. 

It was an unexpected journey. 

And he had asked to be taken home / 

Presently the air grew full of shapes : 
shadowy shapes with mournful faces; 
shapes that hinted secrets, with threaten- 
ings in their eyes. 

If a man’s sins, now, should take to 
themselves bodies, would it not be in some 
such guise as this they would front and 
affright him at dead of night ? 

Preston shivered, sitting there like a 
mere numb lump. 

How much of his wrong-doing is for¬ 
given to a man—and how much remem¬ 
bered against him in the reckoning ? 

How awful this gruesome isolation was 
becoming! 

Was it thus a man went drifting up to 
God? 

The figure at the oars was crooning 



Drolls from Shadowland. 25 

softly. It was like the lullaby his mother 
used to sing to him when he was a 
child. 

There was a breath of freer air—human¬ 
ity lay behind them—they were alone with 
Nature on the vast, dim sea. 

The numbness crept to the roots of his 
being. He had no hands to lift; he had 
no feet to move. His heart grew sluggish : 
there was a numbness in his brain. 

Death stood upright now in the bow 
before him : and in the east he was aware 
of a widening breadth of grey. 

Would the blackness freshen into perfect 
day for him .... or would the night lie 
hopelessly on him for ever ?. . . . 

The figure drew near—and laid its hand 

across his eyes .... 

* * * * 

“ Thrown out of the hansom, and the 


2 6 Drolls from Shadowland. 

wheels went over him, sir. He was 
dead in less than five minutes, I should 
think.” 

“ Cover his face .... and break it 
gently to his wife.” 


THE MAN WHO COULD TALK 
WITH THE BIRDS. 








THE MAN WHO COULD TALK 
WITH THE BIRDS. 


A TALE TOLD BY THE FIRESIDE. 

Wance upon a time there was a youngster 
in Zennor who was all’ys geekin’* into 
matters that warn’t no use in the world. 
Some do say ’a was diver, too, weth it all, 
an’ cut out that there mermaid in the 
church f what the folks do come from 


* Prying. 

+ The mermaid, with glass and comb and with 
the tail of a fish, which is carved on a bench-end 
in Zennor church. 



30 Drolls from Shadowland. 

miles round to see. Anyway, ’a warn’t 
like ’es brawthers an’ sesters, an’ ’es folks 
dedn’ knaw what to maake of un, like. 

Well, wan day when ’a was wand’rin’ 
about, down to Nancledrea or some such 
plaace, *a got ’mong lots o’ trees an’ bushes 
an’ heerd the cuckoos callin’ to ayche 
awther, an’ awther kinds o’ birds what was 
singin’ or talkin,’ an’ all as knawin’ as 
humans, like. So no rest now cud ’a git, 
poor chuckle-head ! for wantin’ to larn to 
spayke weth they. 

Well, it warn’t long arter that ’a was 
geekin’ as usual round some owld ruined 
crellas* up to Choon, when ’a seed 
a man weth a long white beard settin’ 
on wan o’ the burrowsf on the hill 


* Ancient hut-dwellings. 
+ Barrows. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 31 

that are ’longside that owld Quoit* up 
there. 

’A was a bowldish piece o’ goods, was 
the youngster, simmin’ly, for ’a dedn’ mind 
the stranyer a dinyun,f though ’a was like 
an owld black witch, J they do say. Any¬ 
how, the two beginned jawin’ together, an 
soon got thick as Todgy an’ Tom. An’ 
by-an’-by the stranyer wormed out of un 
how ’a was all’ys troubled in ’es mind 
’cause ’a cudn’ onderstaand what the birds 
was say in’. 


* Cromlech. The term is derived from the 
legendary belief that these rude megalithic monu¬ 
ments were used by the giants when playing 
quoits. 

t A little bit, in the least. 

X In Cornwall witch is both masculine and 
feminine. The black witch exercises the most 
potent magic; the white witch being vastly 
inferior in power. 



32 Drolls from Shadow land. 

“ I’d give anything in the world,” says 
the bucca-davy,* “ ef I cud onnly larn to 
spayke weth they.” 

“Aw, es it so, me dear,” said the 
stranyer : “ well, I’ll tayche ’ee to talk to 
they, sure ’nuff, ef thee’ll come up to that 
owld Quoit weth me.” 

“ What must I pay’ee ? ” axed the 
youngster, bowld-like. For he’d heerd o’ 
cureyus bargains o’ this kind, an’ ’a dedn* 
want to risk ’es sawl. 

“Nawthin’ ! Nawthin’, me dear ! ” said 
the stranyer. “ I shall git paid for’t in a 
way o’ me awn.” 

Well, the end of it was, accordin’ to 
the story, that the youngster ’greed to go 
’long weth un : so up the two of ’em went 
to the Quoit. 


* Fool. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 33 

When they come up to un the stones 
seemed to oppen, an’ they went inside an’ 
found un like a house. But that was 
hunderds o’ years ago. The owld Quoit 
now es more like a crellas, though ’a still 
got a bra’ gayte rock for a roof. 

Anyhow, they went in, ’cordin’ to the 
story ; an’ there they lived for a number o’ 
years. 

But, somehow, when they was wance got 
in, the youngster cudn’ git out agen 
nohow. ’A cud geek through the cracks, 
an’ see the country an’ the people, but the 
stones wedn’ oppen, an’ ’a cudn’ git out. 

But the owld black witch keeped ’es 
promise to un, an’ tayched un all that ’a 
wanted to knaw. 

The craws that croaked on the Quoit in 
the sunshine, an’ the sparrers an’ wagtails 
an’ awther kinds o’ birds that come 


D 


34 Drolls from Shadowland. 

flittin’ round an’ cheepin’ to ayche awther, 
the owld witch tayched un (’cordin’ to the 
story) to onderstaand everything any of 
’em said. 

Well, at laast ’a got so diver, ded the 
youngster, that there warn’t no bird but 
what ’a cud talk to ; from the owld black 
raven, wha’s all’ys cryin’ “ corpse ! ” to the 
putty li’l robins what wedn’ hurt a worm. 

But aw! lor’ Jimmeny! warn’t ’a 
disappointed when ’a found what ’a’d ben 
so hankerin’ arter warn’t wuth givin’ a 
snail’s shill to knaw. 

He’d ben thinkin’, ’fore ’a cud onder¬ 
staand them, that what they’d be talkin’ 
about to ayche awther wed be somethin’ 
cureyus an’ mighty diver, all sorts o’ 
strange owld saycrets, s’pose. But ’a 
found, when ’a come to spayke their 
language, that instead o’ tellin’ ’bout 


Drolls from Shadowland. 35 

haypes o’ treasures, an’ hunted housen, 
an’ owld queer ways, they was all the time 
talkin’ ’bout their mait or their nestes, an’ 
awther silly jabber like that. 

So ’a was mighty disappointed, an’ got 
very law-sperrited, though ’a dedn’ like to 
confess it to the witch. 

An’ now, thinks the youngster, he’d 
like to go home agen: an’ shaw off ’fore 
the nayburs, s’pose. 

“ Well, thee cust go,” says the owld 
witch, grinnin’. 

“An’what must I pay’ee for taychin’ 
me ? ” says the youngster. 

“ Nawthin’, sonny ! Nawthin’ at all! ” 
says the witch. “ I shall git me reward in 
a way o’ me awn.” 

An’ weth that ’a bust out laughin’ 
agen. 

Well, anyway, the lad, accordin’ to the 


d 2 


3 6 Drolls from Shadow land. 

story, wished un “good-bye” an’ trudged off 
home. 

But aw ! poor dear ! when ’a got to 
Zennor ’a nigh ’pon brok ’es heart weth 
grief. 

He’d ben livin’ all alone weth the owld 
black witch, an’ ’a hadn’ took no note of 
what was passin’, an’ ’a thought ’a was 
still a youngster, simmin’ly: ’stead o’ 
which ’a was graw’d to an owld, owld man, 
weth no more pith in ’es bones than a 
piskey; an’ ’a cud hardly manage to 
crawl to Zennor, ’a was so owld an’ 
palchy*, an’ nigh ’pon blind. 

An’, wust of all, when ’a got to Zennor 
every wan who knaw’d un was dead an’ 
gone! ’Es faather an’ mawther was up 


Weak. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 37 

in the churchyard, an’ ’a hadn’ got a 
single friend in the world ! 

So because ’a was so owld an’ terrible 
palchy, an’ hadn’ got nowan to taake no 
int’rest in un, through never havin’ took 
no int’rest in nowan, they was obliged to 
put un up to Maddern Union ; an’ there 
’a lingered, owld an’ toatlish,* ’tell ’a died 
at laast a lone owld man. 


Silly. 




THE PURSUIT. 











THE PURSUIT. 


It began when I was a lad at the country 
day-school, struggling to hold my own 
among the scholars in my class. 

If I could only always be perfect in my 
lessons, and among the foremost (if not 
the first) in the examinations; then, at 
least, I thought, I should see Her face to 
face. 

But these good things befell me—possi¬ 
bly undeservedly—and though I swelled 
beneath my coat with inward satisfaction, 
She was still far off: a phantom on the 
hills. 


42 Drolls from Shadowland. 

Then it struck me that if I went to dear 
Mother Nature she would tell me of this 
daughter of hers—so enchanting, yet so 
shy—and I might even one day surprise 
Her on the hill-slopes, or meet Her as She 
wandered among the green, winding lanes. 

So I presently became a haunter of the 
tree-clad valleys, of the prattling brooks 
with the meadowsweet drooping over 
them, and of the lone, bleak hills where 
the great wind growled. 

Many mornings did I steal out long before 
the sunrise in order to watch the stars die 
out in the dawning and the red bars glow in 
the palpitating east. And when, standing 
among the firs in the windy plantation, I 
saw the huge sun rear its head and flood 
the world with splendour, and heard the 
birds sing jubilantly, almost breathless with 
delight, I have fancied I felt the breath of 



Drolls from Shadowland. 43 

the Beloved One on my cheek and Her 
heart beating wildly and tremulously 
against my own. But it was only fancy. 
Presently the singing dwindled and became 
fainter: the air grew hot beneath the 
aromatic fir-boughs: and when, in the 
distance, the flood of dazzling sunlight 
dashed redly on the window-panes of the 
village cottages, I knew I must descend 
from the haunted hill-top and return to the 
more prosaic details of life. If She had 
flown past me, brushing me with Her 
garments in passing, I had not yet dis¬ 
covered Her as a possession that I could 
grasp. 

Then I said to myself, I shall find Her 
among my girl-friends: among their 
rustling garments I shall hear Her gar¬ 
ments rustle; and from among the 
laughing eyes with which they bewilder 


44 Drolls from Shadowland. 

me, I shall no doubt be able to single 
out Hers . 

I chose the pleasantest of the maidens 
who fluttered through my world; and I 
knew her beautiful, and I believed her to 
be true. But that old clown Circumstance 
was piping in the market-place, shewing 
his cheap-jack wares to catch the fancies 
of the maidens, and my sweetheart, caught 
in the excitement of the moment, 
presently paid down for one of his flashy 
baubles no less a price than her own 
young heart. 

Then I said, I will look abroad in the 
market-place myself. Through the clatter 
of feet and the babble of many voices, I 
may perhaps catch a whisper, a hint of Her 
presence. Possibly She may love the 
eager haunts of men even more than She 
loves the silent haunt of the wood-dove 


Drolls from Shadowland. 45 

and the great wide moors where the kite 
circles slowly. I will move among my 
fellows and will search for Her there. 

But the market-place with its thud, thud, 
thud of many feet, and its clatter of 
vehicles, and its buzz of many voices, 
was a busy spot, and the pleasures 
were very cheap ones: and not here 
could I manage to get a glimpse of Her 
face. 

I looked in the shops, and I stood 
beside the hawkers, and I listened to the 
sellers and gossiped with those who bought; 
but the noise, and the heat, and the dust 
that rose so thickly, were more than I had 
bargained for, and I felt lonely and dis¬ 
illusioned : so I very lamely turned my 
back on it all, and went away feeling that 
I should never find Her there. 

Then I built for myself a study into 


46 Drolls from Shadowland. 

which I gathered covetously the most 
perfect vintage of the human intellect—the 
ripest fruit our wise race has garnered 
during all the years it has been harvesting 
from time. And here I sat me down 
waiting for my Beloved. She will 
surely show Her face to me here, 
said I. 

The wind rattled the casement; the 
lamp-flame shook tremulously; and the 
fire burned cheerfully in the grotesque- 
tiled grate. I could hear the rain viciously 
swishing against the window-panes and 
gurgling unmelodiously through the gutters 
and from the pipes, but She whom I 
desired came not to keep me company. 

For all the feast I have gathered for us, 
and for all the comfort I have secured for 
her, She holds aloof, and I have never seen 
Her yet. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 47 


And sometimes now I fancy that possibly 
I may never see Her: but that one day, 
when I am lying in my coffin, She will 
press Her lips to mine—and I shall never 
know. 




A PLEASANT ENTERTAINMENT. 


E 











A PLEASANT ENTERTAINMENT. 


“ I have here,” said the Showman, “ the 
most interesting entertainment to be 
witnessed on earth ! Walk up ! walk up, 
and judge for yourselves ! ” And with 
that he beat the drum and blew shrilly on 
the pipes. 

The music travelled to the ears of his 
audience with a difference : or so it seemed 
to them, as they stood before the booth. 
Some heard in it, through the discordant 
hubbub of the fair, the rattle of vehicles 
and the tramp of feet in the busy thorough¬ 
fares of a great city; for others, it was the 


52 Drolls from Shadowland. 

whistling of birds in the hedgerows; and 
to some, like the restless pulsations 
of the sea. To each, according to his 
memories and his mood. But the music 
of the Showman was a single tune for all. 

“ Walk up ! walk up ! ” bawled the grey- 
coated Showman, blowing at the pipes and 
pounding on the drum. 

“ Darned if I wouldn’t go in, if I had 
the brass! ” quoth a lean, unshaven, 
shabby-looking man, who stood in front of 
the booth with his hands in his pockets. 

“ I’ll stand treat, if you like ! ” cried a 
sunken-eyed young woman, whose cheap 
and much-bedraggled finery matched aptly 
enough with her wan and haggard counten¬ 
ance. It was the impulse of a moment, 
but she was the puppet of impulse and 
danced on the wires at the slightest touch 
of chance. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 53 

“ Right you are ! ” cried the man. 

And they mounted the steps to¬ 
gether. 

“ It’s like going up to the altar, isn’t 
it ? ” giggled the woman to her com¬ 
panion. 

“ More like going up to the gallows,” 
growled the man. 

The Showman rattled the coins as he 
pocketed them, and flinging aside the 
canvas admitted them to the booth. 

The interior was enveloped in a dim 
obscurity ; hardly deep enough to be 
counted as darkness, but oppressive enough 
to slow the pulses of both. There was, 
however, at one end of the booth a large 
disc projected on the obscurity : a pale, 
empty, weirdly-lighted circle, which they 
stared at dumbly, with wonder in their 
eyes. 



54 Drolls from Shadow land. 

“ Is this some darned fool’s joke ? ” 
growled the man. 

“ Hush ! ” said the woman, “ the enter¬ 
tainment has commenced.” 

And, true enough, the disc at which they 
had been staring had already a stirring, as 
of life, across its surface. 

They were aware of a couple of enthral¬ 
ling faces fronting them side by side on the 
disc. 

One was a woman’s face, exquisitely 
beautiful, with soft blue eyes, full of the 
most charming gaiety, and with lips as 
sweetly winsome as a child’s: the other 
was a man’s face, proud and handsome, 
the mouth set firmly, the eyes full of 
thought. 

“ Such a face I had dreamed of as my 
own,” sighed the woman. 

“ So I had imagined I might have been,” 
mused the man. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 55 

And then the scenes on the disc began 
to wax and dwindle rapidly; like the 
momentary clinging, and as rapid vanish¬ 
ing, of breath across a mirror of polished 
steel. 

There was a vague fluttering and inter¬ 
change of images ; an elusive, intangible 
influx of suggestions, and an equally 
dreamy efflux of the same. 

A young girl growing into beautiful 
womanhood, well-dressed, shapely, sought 
eagerly in marriage, admired by the opposite 
sex, and envied by her own. Then a woman 
in the prime of her powers of enjoyment— 
with her charms undiminished and her 
wishes ripened—wedded, and success¬ 
fully shaping her life: a woman blessed 
greatly, and very happy. 

And side by side with these dream- 
fancies, or imaginings, went those of a 


5 6 Drolls from Shadowland. 

young man facing the world gallantly ; 
surmounting every obstacle easily, and 
conquering hearts as if by a spell. There 
was success for him in every scene on 
which he entered: he was proud and 
admired, and very haughty, and very 
rich. 

Presently, as if through some dexterous 
sleight of hand, the pictures of his wooing 
blended waveringly and dimly with the 
pictures which emerged for the bedraggled 
woman who stood beside the loafer in 
front of the disc. 

In the church, when the wedding-march 
was being played, and in the vignettes of 
domestic happiness that ensued, the faces 
and scenes mysteriously coalesced. 

For the two spectators, who watched the 
shifting pictures breathlessly, there were 
no longer four figures in the scene, but only 
two. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 57 

“ Some such future I had imagined for 
myself,” the man muttered. 

And the woman mused amazedly: 
“ These were day-dreams of my own.” 

The disc became obscured, as if their 
eyes were blurred mistily. 

The woman gulped down something : 
and the man clenched his teeth. 

There was a sudden exquisite clarity in 
the pictures. They were looking at a 
cluster of white-washed cottages, with tall 
thatched roofs and with great stone chim¬ 
neys : a lonely little hamlet drowsing in 
the sun. White-winged ducks were 
quacking in the roadway, a grey-coated 
donkey was grazing beside a hedge, and 
the threadlets of smoke, that mounted 
lazily above the roofs, rose up into a sky 
of the most exquisite purity, spacious, high, 
and cloudlessly blue. And again there 
was only one scene for them both. 


58 Drolls from Shadow land. 

“ My God, that is where I was born ! ’ 
groaned the man. 

“ That’s my mother’s cottage ! ” sobbed 
the woman, and wept aloud. 

Then came rural scenes of almost every 
character, with a lad and a girl moving 
flittingly through them—laughing and 
kissing in the lanes among the brambles, 
drifting together everywhere, sweetheart- 
ing through it all. 

“Are you Nelly King, then?” asked 
the man, hoarsely. 

“ And you .... you are Stephen Laity, 
are you not ? ” 

“ If we could both die here and now ! ” 
cried the man. 

Then the pictures for a while grew 
blurred and confused, till presently they 
shewed the gas-lighted streets of 
London .... 


Drolls from Shadowland. 59 

“ My God, I will see no more ! ” cried 
the girl. And she shudderingly held her 
hand before her eyes. 

“ Nor I, either ! ” cried the man, with 
an oath. 

“ However much you close your eyes,” 
said the Showman, “you will cancel 
nothing of the pictures on the screen.” 

But they had turned and fled even 
while he was speaking. 

“ Even in the fair the pictures will 
pursue you ! ” said the stern-visaged Show¬ 
man, following them with his eyes. 




THE MAN WHO DESIRED TO BE 

A TREE. 






% 








THE MAN WHO DESIRED TO BE 
A TREE. 


The sunshine streamed across the lush- 
grassed meadows, and beat fiercely down 
on the huge-limbed elms whose myriad 
leaves kept fluttering ceaselessly. In the 
dense green covert, formed by the multi¬ 
tude of interlacing branches, several wee 
brown songsters had built their nests, and 
they kept flitting to and fro and trilling 
joyously as the light breeze stirred the 
innumerable leaves. 

The air was warm, and soft, and 
pleasant. The deep green arcades were 


64 Drolls from Shadowland. 

cool and moist, full of the drowsy flutter 
that rippled through the branches, and full 
also of the deliciously delicate fragrance 
from the budding sprays and fresh green 
foliage. May was in the woodlands, shy 
and winsome; she had not yet shaken 
herself free from her day-dreams, and the 
wonder of her young hopes lingered about 
her still. 

At the foot of a tree, reclining against 
its roots, lay a lean-visaged student, very 
shabbily dressed and with patches of thin 
grey hair around his temples. A volume 
of the Faery Queen lay open beside him, 
but he had for some time ceased to pore 
over its pages, being engaged instead in 
chasing Fancy as she flitted hither and 
thither through the vast green woodland, 
dallying with the shadows and gossiping 
with the wind. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 65 


His mind’s eye revelled in the pictur¬ 
esque suggestions that seemed to him, 
as he lay here with half-closed lids, to be 
fleetingly visible, as if in a dream. He 
was aware of beautiful damsels in gauzy 
draperies pantingly hurrying through the 
dusky avenues with steel-clad knights in 
hot pursuit; of grey old monks, cowled 
and sandalled, moving hither and thither 
in a world of utter peace; and of dryads 
and fairies, fauns and satyrs, filling the 
woodland with dreamy poetry, as the wind 
filled its giant rafters with music, and the 
brooks purled babblingly through the 
crevices of its floor. 

How delightful it would be to be a 
denizen of the forest—to be this elm in 
whose shadow he was lying! he thought. 

The huge tent-like shadow of the elm- 
tree deepened and widened with the 

F 



66 Drolls from Shadowland. 

dropping sun, and the shadows of other 
trees in the vicinity—dainty saplings and 
gnarled old foresters — fell across the 
nearer margin of the grass-land in fantastic, 
almost semi-human outlines: at least, so 
it seemed to the dreamy student, as he 
lay here watching the breeze ripple across 
the grass-blades and listened to the mur¬ 
mur of the forest at his back. 

“ I should like to be a tree,” he sighed 
lazily and half aloud. 

“Would you?” asked a voice from 
somewhere close to him. 

It was a low, caressing, insinuating 
voice, with a strange seductiveness in its 
silvery intonation. And instead of feeling 
startled he felt a sudden wave of happiness, 
as if a beautiful female had breathed upon 
his cheek. 

“ Would you ? ” asked the voice, 


Drolls from Shadowland. 67 

deliciously flattering him, “ would you 
like to be one of us indeed ? ” 

A tree has a life void of trouble, he 
ruminated. The birds sing to it, and the 
wind caresses it, and it feels the sunshine, 
and greatens where it grows. Yes, I 
should like to be a tree indeed ! 

“ Shall I grant your wish ? ” asked the 
voice whisperingly—how exquisitely sweet 
and soothing it was !—“ shall I grant it 
here, and now?” it asked. 

The student closed his eyes to leisurely 
consider; and then, half dreamily, an¬ 
swered, “Yes!” 

To be a tree is to be in touch with Nature 
nakedly; to be stripped of the disguises 
that have gathered about the man, and to 
be thrown back blankly into the narrowest 
groove of life. The student felt the wind 
and the sun on his branches, and the birds 


f 2 


68 Drolls from Shadowland. 

sang joyously, nestling among his leaves; 
his feet were rooted in the fresh and whole¬ 
some earth, and the sap moved sluggishly 
in his rough-barked trunk. 

It was a calm and deeply drowsy exis¬ 
tence; but the restlessness of humanity 
was not yet eliminated from him, and he 
investigated his novel tenement wonder- 
ingly, and not without a touch of squeam¬ 
ish disgust. 

But when the quiet night descended on 
him, and the cooling dews slid into his 
pores, the exquisite soothe of the darkness 
enveloped him, and to the rustling of his 
leaves he fell healthily asleep. 

He was awakened presently by the 
gracious dawn, by the sweet and wholesome 
breath of morning, and the flash of the 
sunrise and the singing of birds. And 
had it not been for the dew-crumpled 


Drolls from Shadowland. 69 

volume that now lay blotched and 
smirched at his feet, he would have for¬ 
gotten his manhood and the unquiet life 
of cities and would have looked for his 
brothers only among the trees. 

But so long as the volume lay there 
forlornly, so long he remembered, and 
had something to regret. 

But the days passed—he could now 
keep no count of them—and human 
speech and human passions dropped away 
from his memory as quietly and painlessly 
as his own ripe leaves began presently to 
drop. And the tree’s life narrowed to its 
narrow round of needs. 

It sheltered the birds, and it took the 
wind’s kisses gladly, and it caught the 
snows in the wrinkles and twists of its 
boughs; and the squirrel nested in 
it, and the wood-mouse nibbled at it; 


70 Drolls from Shadowland. 

and its life sufficed it, answering its 
desires. 

* * * * 

One day there swept a mighty storm 
across the forest: the thunder crashed and 
the lightning flashed continuously; and 
the whole land held its breath, listening to 
the uproar. 

The Lord of the Forest was moving 
among his children : and some of them he 
passed without injuring or despoiling 
them ; but others he smote wrathfully, so 
that he rent them and they died. 

And when he came to the tree that had 
one-time been the student, he remembered, 
and desired to bestow on it a boon. 

And he said to the elm, now gnarled 
and wrinkled, “ You shall be a man again, 
if you earnestly desire it—a man again 
until you die.” 


Drolls from Shadowland. 71 

The tree heard the great wind roaring 
among its brethren, and it was aware of 
the wee birds cowering among its boughs ; 
and it remembered, as in a flash, the 
weary life of humanity, with hopes to 
befool it and despair for its reward : and it 
rustled its myriad leaves whispering mourn¬ 
fully, “ Let me, O Master, remain as I 
am!” 

And the Lord of the Forest was content, 
and passed on. 


. 




THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN. 







THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN. 


On the third day he recovered from the 
“ trance ” and regained consciousness, and 
took up the burden of his life as before. 

But the revelation which had been 
vouchsafed to him had influenced him 
profoundly. He had now a new estimate 
of values and results. The centre of his 
mental life was permanently shifted, and a 
new bias had been given to his thoughts. 

He went to the King, where he sat 
sunning himself in his palace. 

“You are very rich,” said the man to 
the King. 


y6 Drolls from Shadowland. 

“ God has so willed it, and I am grate¬ 
ful,” said the King. 

“ You hope one day to see God face to 
face ? ” 

“ I do hope so, fervently! ” said the 
King, with unction. 

“ And if He questions you of your 
wealth you will express your gratitude and 
bow to Him, and God will accept the com¬ 
pliment and be content ? ” 

The King was silent. 

“ You think He will ask no questions ? ” 
said the man. “ He will not trouble to 
refer to His starving children, with whom 
you might reasonably have shared your 
superfluities ; to the sick whom you might 
have succoured; or to the sorrowing 
whom you might have cheered? You had 
wealth, and were grateful for it: and you 
used it on yourself. And presently, when 


Drolls from Shadow land. 77 

you are dead ? ” asked the man, more 
quietly. “If you sit beside the beggar 
who perished at your gates, what will you 
say to him if he should refer to matters 
such as these ? ” 

“ Sit beside a beggar ! ” cried the King, 
in high disdain. 

“ You forget it will be in heaven,” said 
the man, gently. 

“In heaven, of course, I shall be a 
king as I am here ! ” 

“ Oh, will you ?” said the man : “I was 
not aware of that. I saw kings there per¬ 
forming the lowliest of services. And I 
saw many in hell: the majority of them 
were there.” And therewith the man 
sighed heavily, as he mused. 

The King turned his back on him : and 
they thrust him out at the gates. 


78 Drolls from Shadoivland. 

The Archbishop was reading a novel by 
the fire. 

“Your work, then, is ended, is it?” 
asked the man. 

“ Oh no! not by any means ended, I 
hope. I attended a drawing-room meet¬ 
ing at Lady Clack’s yesterday,” said the 
Archbishop, smiling benignantly on his 
questioner, “and this morning I have 
sanctioned proceedings against a vicar 
who for some time has been wavering 
heretically in his opinions. I think we 
can effectually silence him at last. Oh 
yes, I am extremely busy, I can assure 
you.” 

“There are no souls, then, to be saved ? ” 
said the man. “ No lives to be reformed : 
and no mourners to be comforted ? This 
side of your duties you have completed 
and closed ? ” 


Drolls from Shadowland. 79 

The Archbishop looked at him with 
extreme hauteur. “ My dear sir, I leave 
these matters to my subordinates. I am 
here as an administrator, not as a 
minister.” 

“ And you always choose the men best 
fitted to be ministers ? ” 

“ Of course. At any rate, I hope so,” 
quoth the Archbishop. 

“That young curate who has so 
successfully played the evangelist in 
Gorseshire—he will have one of your 
earliest nominations, then, no doubt ? ” 

“ Indeed, he will not! He has offended 
me deeply. Would you believe it ? he 
wrote an article on me in one of the 
reviews, and he actually had the audacity, 
sir, to criticize me unfavourably ! I will 
see that the man remains exactly where he 


80 Drolls from Shadowland. 

“ And when you by-and-by make your 
report to your Master, will you explain to 
Him your methods and your aims in this 
way ? If so, do you think He will be satis¬ 
fied with you ? Your methods and His are 
at variance, surely ? In heaven there are 
neither archbishops nor bishops, as such. 
If they pass the gates at all, it is merely 
as men who have done their duty. Do 
you think you will pass the gates on that 
score, your Grace ? ” 

The Archbishop rang the bell sharply 
and abruptly. 

“Please show this gentleman out!” 
said His Grace. 

* * * * 

“So you persist in disowning your 
daughter ? ” asked the man, looking hard 
at the portly, pleasant-faced matron who 
was dandling her thirteenth infant on her 


Drolls from Shadowland . 81 

knees. “You will show her no mercy, 
now she asks it at your hands ? ” 

“She has disgraced me—I will never 
forgive her ! ” said the woman. “ Let her 
starve with her brat. It will be well when 
they are dead.” 

“ She has disgraced you, you say ? But 
has she disgraced Nature? I thought it 
was Nature who was responsible for her 
sex and its instincts. She has obeyed the 
one and fulfilled the other. And they 
have been paramount considerations with 
you also, I perceive.” 

“Did she owe no duty, then, to her 
parents ? Was I to count in her life 
merely as the soil to the plant ? ” 

“ In the scales of justice, as I saw them 
adjusted in heaven, the claim against the 
parents weighed the heaviest,” said the 
man. “You suckled her at your breasts; 


G 


82 Drolls from Shadowland, 

but you brought her there to suckle. In 
your bringing her there, lies the onus of 
her claim.” 

“ I tell you, she has disgraced me, and 
I will never forgive her ! ” 

“‘Never’is a long day for a mortal. 
You will be judged yourself before you 
reach the end of it,” said the man. 

* * * * 

“ Three months’ imprisonment with hard 
labour,” said the magistrate. 

“ For taking a loaf of bread when he 
was starving ! ” cried the man. 

“ Even so,” said the magistrate, with his 
hands on his paunch. 

“ But surely this is a monstrous perver¬ 
sion of justice. Or, rather, let me call it a 
monstrous /^justice ! ” 

“ The laws of the community must be 
respected,” said the magistrate. 


Drolls from Shadow land. 83 

“ Here is a man—alive by no fault of 
his own, and poor, even to starvation, 
through absolute want of work: and yet 
you begrudge him the necessaries of life ! 
If he tries to commit suicide, you pillory 
and chastise him, and if he tries to keep 
life in him out of the superfluities of 
others, you pass on him this monstrous 
sentence! ” cried the man. “ Surely here 
is some fault in the structure of your 
society.” 

“ It is the law of the community ! ” said 
the magistrate, pompously 

“And in what way is the law of the 
community so very sacred, that it should 
be counted of higher price than the life 
and welfare of a man ? The law of the 
community may be a very pretty idol to 
play before, but in heaven it counts for 
nothing,” said the quiet old man. 


84 Drolls from Shadowland. 

“ This man is a pestilent fellow,” said 
the community. “He troubles us over¬ 
much with this vision that he has know¬ 
ledge of. Come, let us kill him ! ” 

And they smote him, and he died. 


THE UNCHRISTENED CHILD. 








THE UNCHRISTENED CHILD. 

“ Thee shaan’t christen un, ef he’s never 
christened ! ” said the father. “ I’ve no 
faith in ’ee: not a dinyun.* Go to 
Halifax to shoot gaanders : tha’s all thee’rt 
fit for! ” 

“ He’ll suffer for it, both here and here¬ 
after,” said the parson. 

“ Doan’t believe it! ” said the man. 

“ Wherever he dies, whether on land or 
on water, he will become a creature of 
that element instead of going to his rest,” 


* Little bit. 




88 Drolls from Shadowland. 

said the parson, with an angry light in his 
eyes. 

“ Doan’t believe it! ” said the man : 
“ an’ thee doan’t nayther.” 

The parson marched off, disdaining to 
reply. 

The infant grew into a bright little lad, 
but there was always a certain oddity 
about him, and he saw and understood 
more than he ought. 

One day he was out fishing with a 
companion, in a tiny punt they had bor¬ 
rowed for the purpose, when he leaned 
overboard too far and fell into the sea. 

His little companion was so paralysed 
with terror that he could do nothing but 
set up a shrill screaming, clinging to the 
boat with both his hands. 

Silas rose once—and twice—with wildly- 
pleading eyes : his mouth full of water: 


Drolls from Shadowland. 89 

his hair plastered against his head: then 
sank; and a third time emerged just above 
the surface; so close to the boat that his 
companion, leaning over, could see him 
sinking down slowly into the crystalline 
depths, with his hands stretched up and 
the hair on his head tapering to a point 
like the flame of a candle. 

“ Silas! Silas ! ” the little lad shrieked. 

But Silas sank down ; and ever down : 
lower and lower beneath the translucent 
waters, the vast flood deepening its tint 
above him, till at last he was hopelessly 
buried out of sight. 

When John Penberthy heard the terrible 
news he took the blow as a man might 
take a sentence of death—in grim silence, 
and with a sullen despair which nothing 
might henceforth banish or relieve. The 
roof-tree of his hopes was broken 


90 Drolls from Shadowland. 

irretrievably, and he gazed down blankly 
at the ruin around his feet. 

About three days after Silas was 
drowned, John was one afternoon out 
fishing for bait, and happened to be keep¬ 
ing rather close to the cliff-line, when he 
perceived a little seal emerge from a zawn* 
and come swimming, as with a settled 
purpose, towards the boat. 

There was something so melancholy 
and so pathetically human in the soft, 
liquid eyes of the animal, that John felt 
his heart touched unaccountably. 

Forgetting the line, which he was just 
about to draw in, he sat staring at the seal 
with a fixed intensity, as if he were looking 
in the familiar eyes of some one with whom 
he had a world of memories to interchange. 


* A cave. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 91 

And, meanwhile, the seal swam straight 
up to him, till it was so close to the boat 
that he could touch it with his hand. 

John leaned over and looked straight at 
the animal: fixing his eyes hungrily on the 
eyes of the seal. 

“Why dedn’ee ha’ me christened, 
faather ? ” asked the little seal, piteously. 

“My God! are’ee Silas?” cried John, 
trembling violently. 

“ Iss, I’m Silas,” said the little seal. 

John stared aghast at the smooth brown 
head and the innocent eyes that watched 
him so pathetically. 

“Why, I thought thee wert drownded, 
Silas ! ” he ejaculated. 

“ I caan’t go to rest ’tell I’m christened,” 
said the seal. 

“How can us do it now?” asked the 
father, anxiously. 


92 Drolls fro 7 n Shadowland. 

“ Ef anywan who’s christened wed 
change sauls weth me,” said the seal, 
“ then I cud go to rest right away.” 

“ Thee shall ha’ my saul, Silas,” said the 
father, tenderly. 

“Will’ee put thy mouth to mine an’ 
bray the it into me, faather?” 

“ Iss, me dear, that I will! ” said the 
father. “Rest thee shust have ef I can 
give it to’ee, Silas. Put thy haands 
or paws around me neck, will’ee, 
soas ? ” 

And John leaned over the side of the 
boat till his face touched that of the 
piteous little seal. 

At that moment the boat—which for 
the last few minutes had been allowed 
to drift at the mercy of the tide, owing to 
John’s pre-occupation—was caught among 
the irregular currents near a skerry, and 


Drolls from Shadowland. 93 

John was suddenly jerked, or tilted, over¬ 
board, plunging into the waters with a 
sullen splash. 

When he rose to the surface, with a 
deadly chill in him—the chill of his drear 
and imminent doom, even more than the 
grueing chill of the water—his first thought, 
even in that perilous moment, was of dear 
little Silas and the promise he had given to 
him, or, at least, the promise he had given 
to the seal. 

The quaint little creature was, however, 
nowhere visible; and John, with a sudden 
influx of strength—an alarmed awakening 
and resurgence of his will—made up his 
mind to save his life if it were possible, 
and quietly leave the settlement of the 
other affair to God. 

but grey old Fate was stronger than he 
was. And the waves were here her 


94 Drolls from Shadowland. 

obedient servants; doing her will blindly, 
without pity or remorse. 

In a little while John was tossing among 
the seaweed—into a bed of which his 
body had descended—and what further 
dreams (if any) he dreamed there beneath 
the waters, must remain untold till the 
Judgment Day. 


THE MAN WHO MET HATE. 


























THE MAN WHO MET HATE. 


It was drawing on towards midnight, and 
the world seemed very lonely. 

There was a huge, round harvest moon 
in the sky, and the hills were bathed in a 
kind of spectral splendour—a faint and 
filmy shimmer of silver that left the out¬ 
lines of objects blurred and elusive, though 
the scene as a whole emerged clearly for 
the eye. The wind was sighing drowsily 
across the moors, while high on the rugged 
cairns on the hill-tops it was wuthering 
mournfully beneath the wan grey sky. 

And ’Lijah, staring sleeplessly through 


98 Drolls from Shadowland. 

his blindless bedroom-window, felt a grow¬ 
ing unrest in the very marrow of his 
bones. 

He could see down below, in the little 
lonesome cove, the cottage where Dorcas 
had now made her nest with that “ darned 
gayte long-legged ’Miah ” for her husband, 
and in the sudden heat and bitterness of 
his wrath his heart became like a live coal 
within him. “ I’ll have my revenge on un, 
ef I haang for it! ” growled he. 

And then he remembered that up on 
yonder moors—whose ferns and granite 
boulders he could see plainly in the moon¬ 
light—there was a “ gashly owld fogou,”* 
where, if a man went at midnight prepared 
to boldly summon Hate and to “ turn a 


* A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 99 

stone ”* in her honour, his hatred would 
be accomplished for him “as sure as 
death.” 

“ An’ I’ll go there, ef I die for it! ” said 
he grimly to himself. 

The village was asleep, and all its 
cottages were smokeless. There was no 
one stirring anywhere in the cove. But 
far out in the moonlit bay he could see the 
fishing-boats dotting the vast grey plain, 
and he knew that in one of them ’Miah 
Laity was fishing, and was no doubt think¬ 
ing of Dorcas as he fished. 

“ I’ll spoil ’es thinkin’ for un ’fore long,” 
said ’Lijah, “ ayven ef I have to sill me 
saul to do the job ! ” 

And with that he slipped on his coat 


* A portion of the rites practised in connection 
with “ cursing stones.” 


H 2 


fL.ofC. 



ioo Drolls from Shadow land. 

and boots—for he had been standing at 
the window half undressed—and clapping 
on his cap as he passed through the 
kitchen, strode heavily and gloomily out 
of the house. 

On the moor he had only the breeze for 
company, and its long, vague wail, as it 
rustled across the ferns, merely deepened 
the moody irritation in his mind. He felt 
as sour as a fanatic and as gloomy as a 
thief. 

To find the fogou, among the bewildering 
growth of ferns, was by no means the easiest 
task in the world: for the rude cave¬ 
dwelling was literally buried in the hill¬ 
side ; its entrance being hidden by the 
rank vegetation that here reached almost 
to Elijah’s arm-pits. 

As he ploughed his way through the 
trackless tangle, giving vent the while to a 


Drolls from Shadowland. ioi 

superfluity of oaths, he presently stumbled 
on the entrance to the fogou, almost pre¬ 
cipitating himself into its darkness, so 
suddenly had he stumbled on it, wading 
through the ferns. 

The low and narrow tunnel in the hill¬ 
side, with its walls and roof lined with slabs 
of rock, was as uncanny a spot as a man 
could set foot in, and Elijah shook 
like one with the ague, as he thrust aside 
the ferns and peered into the blackness. 

He turned round, half inclined to 
retreat; but, as he turned, his eyes chanced 
to travel to the sea, where he could still 
discern the fishing-boats riding at their 
nets; and the idea of ’Miah out there 
thinking of Dorcas made him clench his 
teeth grimly, as if he had received a blow. 

He swung round on his heels sharply 
and determinedly, savagely trampling the 


102 Drolls from Shadowland. 

ferns beneath his feet, and strode forward 
into the pitch-black mirk. 

Groping his way in, with hands 
extended, he presently found the block of 
granite called the altar, and “turning the 
stone ” in the hollow on its surface, he 
shaped the while in his heart his rancorous 
prayer to Hate. 

Suddenly he was aware of a face staring 
at him : a mere face vaguely limned on the 
darkness, as if a bodiless head were held 
before him by the hair. 

And in that same instant, without a word 
being uttered, he felt that he had looked 
in the face of Hate. 

He reeled out of the fogou like a 
drunken man. 

The vision was one it would be 
impossible to forget. He must bear with 
him this memory, as a man who has 


Drolls from Shadow land. 103 

committed a murder must bear with him 
the memory of his victim’s ghastly face. 

“I’ll wait an’ see what comes of it,” 
said ’Lijah to himself, as he ran and 
stumbled down the hill-side in the moon¬ 
light, the thick hair stiffening under his 
cap. 

* * * * 

The months slipped by, and the years 
dragged on sluggishly, and ’Miah and 
Dorcas were as happy as ever. They had 
a couple of bairns to toddle about their 
cottage, and ’Miah had been fairly 
fortunate on the fishery, so that their lives 
were generally sunny and enviable to an 
extent that made Elijah’s blood turn 
to gall. 

“Thee’st forgotten me, thou darned 
owld liar that thou art! ” said he, shaking 
his fist savagely at the fern-clad hill- 


104 Drolls from Shadowland. 

side, where Hate presumably was watching 
from her lair. 

On which he heard a chilling whisper 
at his elbow: “You shall have your wish, 
as sure as death ! ” 

Elijah heard the loud thump, thump of 
his heart. But an instant after, his pulse 
danced buoyantly, and he went about his 
work chuckling grimly to himself. 

But while ’Miah’s life was harvesting 
happiness, as his nets gathered abundantly 
the harvest of the sea, Elijah’s life on his 
farm on the hill-side appeared to be 
stifling among the stones and thistles, and 
a sour and acid leanness seemed eating up 
his heart. 

It was as if Hate had shot her arrows 
blindly, and they had struck and rankled 
in the wrong breast. 

With Elijah Trevorrow nothing seemed 



Drolls from Shadowland. 105 

to prosper. He might rise early and go 
to bed late, he might pinch and pare as 
relentlessly as he pleased, every year of his 
life he grew leaner and poorer, till the 
scowl on his features deepened per¬ 
manently among its lines, and in the end 
transformed his features as completely as 
a mask. 

He was no more like the clear-eyed, 
whistling young farmer who had gone 
a-wooing Dorcas among the rustling wheat- 
fields, than the wrinkled tree, with its 
heart rotted out of it, is like the green 
young sapling in the bravery of its spring. 

Ever watching hungrily to see Misfor¬ 
tune seize his rival and set her teeth 
thirstily in the very pulse of his life, Elijah 
held aloof from commerce with his neigh¬ 
bours, sour and discontented, and wishing 
each day to end, in the hope that on 


io6 Drolls from Shadozvland. 

the morrow he might see the evil he 
desired. 

Presently there went a whisper through 
the tiny hamlet that Elijah Trevorrow was 
a bit touched here —the villagers tapping 
their brows significantly as they spoke. 

“ He do talk as ef Hate es a woman, 
an’ he’ve seed her. Up in that owld 
fogou he’ve mit her, he do say. An’ he’s 
all’ys sayin’ she ha’nt keeped her word to 
un. Whatever do ’a mayne, weth ’es 
gashly owld tales ? ” 

’Miah, whose name had got mixed up 
in the tale, one day called at the lonely 
farmhouse, in order to see Elijah and 
reason with him if he could. 

But Elijah, as ’Miah approached, set 
the dogs on him savagely, and the fisher¬ 
man was obliged precipitately to beat a 
retreat. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 107 

At last, one day in the depth of winter, 
when the hills were white with whirling 
snowdrifts, Elijah Trevorrow disappeared. 

They searched everywhere for him, but 
could find no trace of him, and the search 
was finally abandoned in despair. 

Elijah had made his way to the fogou, 
determined to front Hate and to compel her 
to keep faith with him, even if he squeezed 

her life out through her throat. 

* * * * 

Some eight months after—in the time 
of blackberries—some youngsters, quest¬ 
ing among the ferns on the hillside, 
stumbled across the fogou and crept in 
to explore it. 

They rushed down the hillside scream¬ 
ing with terror ; and, when safe among the 
cottages, began to babble incoherently 
that there was a ghost up yonder in the 


108 Drolls from Shadowland. 

“ owld hunted fogou,” they had seen its 
face—and it was white—so white ! 

The villagers began to have an inkling 
of the truth, and went toiling up through 
the ferns in a body. 

“ As like as not ’tes he, poor saul,” 
they whispered awesomely as they 
clambered up the windy ridges of the hill. 

True enough, it was Elijah, dead in the 
fogou. But whether or not he had again 
met Hate there, is one of the questions 
the gossips have still to solve. 


r 


THE HAUNTED HOUSE. 






THE HAUNTED HOUSE. 


It was only an old deserted house, 
perched half-way up the hillside and over¬ 
looking the village. But it was none the 
less the village theatre: the peep-hole 
through which the villagers obtained a 
glimpse of many mysteries, and the stage 
and drop-scene of half the legends of the 
thorp. 

It was an old stone building which 
evidently had once been a dwelling of 
importance, but for quite a century it had 
been tenantless and almost entirely dis¬ 
mantled : the home of the owl and the 
lizard, of the spectre and the bat. 


112 Drolls from Shadowland. 

When the sunrise splashed across the 
fragmentary panes of glass that here and 
there remained in their frames, the farmer 
would stand still at his ploughing on the 
hill-slope and glance up at the great Argus- 
eyed building—that had now, however, 
more sockets than eyes—and a world of 
memories, of legends and superstitions, 
would buzz, with strange bewilderment, 
through his brain. 

The old house reminded him of his 
mother and of his grandfather, and of those 
who had been the village historians for his 
childhood, and a musing gravity seemed 
to deepen in his mind. He was aware of 
the brevity of life, and of the lapse of the 
personality; of the tragedies of passion, 
with their gravity and poignancy, and of 
the mystery that broods at the back of all 
our thoughts. But most of all he was 


Drolls from Skadowland. 113 

aware that the building standing fronting 
him was the very kernel of his individuality 
projected into visibility : the one knot into 
which all his memories were tied. 

He would hold his children spell-bound 
by the hour as he told them the ordinary 
folk-tales of the hamlet, with that ruin on 
the hillside as the stage for the majority of 
them; till his daughter Ruth, who was 
young and sentimental, though with a 
streak of passion running through her 
nature, learned to contemplate the ruin 
with an awe akin to his, and stared up 
wonderingly at it, so long and so often, that 
at last it had become for her a necessary 
part of life. 

While Ruth was still a child, the haunted 
ruin chiefly attracted her thoughts as the 
scene and locality of uncanny occurrences 
that were fanciful and unusual rather than 


1 


114 Drolls from Shadow land. 

sombre or suggestive. It was the great 
haunted cheese in which the piskies 
burrowed, and out of which they hopped 
with amusing unexpectedness : it was the 
building to pass which you must always 
turn your stocking, if you wished to escape 
being pisky-ledden , or misguided : it was 
the place to which the “ Little Folks ” * 
conveyed stolen children: above all, it was 
the place of dark and cobwebbed corners, 
where naughty children were put to live 
with snails and spiders and with great big 
goggle-eyed buccaboos! 

As she stood «on her doorstep with her 
bit of knitting in her hand—a tiny doll’s 
stocking, or a garter for herself—little Ruth 
would stare up at the great black building, 
with the scarlet splendour of the sunset at 


* Fairies. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 115 

its back, until she almost fancied she could 
see the little winking piskies grinning 
through the window-holes and clambering 
across the roofs. 

And by-and-by, when the rich yellow 
sky began to darken and the flocks of 
rooks flew cawing overhead, Ruth would 
shiver with a delicious sense of security as 
she stood beneath the porch in the gather¬ 
ing twilight and heard the wind begin to 
moan and sigh mysteriously, as if it 
trembled at the thought of spending the 
night on the hillside with no other company 
than that “whisht* owld house.” 

As she grew older and became aware of 
the drift of her wishes, feeling stirrings and 
promptings at the roots of her life, her 
imagination seized now on the passionate 


Melancholy, forlorn. 



ii 6 Drolls from Shadow land. 

human tragedies which, according to the 
legends, had been enacted in the building. 
She had a sweetheart of her own, and she 
could understand lovers; and something 
of the glamour and mystery of a great 
heady passion she believed she could 
interpret out of her own ripened life. 

But Rastus Dabb, her sweetheart, was 
as cloddish and unimaginative as the 
heavy-uddered cows, with their great fleshy 
dewlaps, of which he was prouder than he 
was of anything else in his world. It was 
quite impossible to get his feet off the solid 
earth: and apparently his mind was 
anchored firmly to his feet. But Ruth had 
the attractiveness of all young things—she 
was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as 
light as a feather—and, by the law of con¬ 
trast, she suited him to a nicety, more 
especially as she was an excellent little 


Drolls from Shadowland. 117 

housewife to boot. So the courting pros¬ 
pered sunnily ; and he let her “ romance ” 
as she pleased. 

When she was a wife and mother, Ruth 
presently became acquainted with that 
grim Shadow who knows the secret of our 
tears—their source and the bitter in them 
—and knows, too, the secret of everlasting 
peace. And thereafter, when at intervals 
his wings darkened the world for her, her 
thoughts went out, with a strange yearning, 
towards the dead who had once inhabited 
the ruin and could now roam through it 
only as ghosts. 

“ Shall I one day have only such a foot¬ 
hold as theirs in this dear green world of 
ours ? ” she would ask herself, shiveringly. 
And the Sunday-evening’s sermon could 
soothe her not a whit. 

At last, in the waning afternoon of life, 


118 Drolls from Shadowland. 

when her smooth brown hair was as yet 
unstreaked with grey and her cheeks had 
still a splash of colour in them, she fell ill 
of some mysterious malady—mysterious, 
at least, to the sympathetic villagers—and 
one dreary day in the blustering autumn 
she was aware in her heart that the Shadow 
was in the room, 

“ Draw back the curtains as far as you 
can,” said she to Rastus, who stood help^ 
less by the bedside. 

And when they were drawn, and she 
could see the great gaunt ruin frowning 
blackly above the slopes of the shadow- 
checkered hillside, she cried out suddenly, 
“ I’m going there among them, Rastus ! 
Oh, dear, hold me ! ” And with that she 
passed. 


♦ 


GIFTS AND AWARDS. 












GIFTS AND AWARDS. 


“ Two bonnier babes,” said the grey old 
midwife, bending thoughtfully over them, 
“ I never before assisted into the world.” 

The mother, lying wan in her bed, 
smiled happily. 

“ So bonny are they,” said the wrinkled 
beldame, “ that I will give to each of them 
one of my choicest gifts : something they 
will still keep hugged to their hearts when 
they are as close to the gates as you or I.” 

“ And how close is that ? ” asked the 
mother, growing whiter. 

The wise old midwife turned from the 



122 Drolls from Shadowland. 

bedside and bent above the infants, 
mumbling to herself. 

Presently the mother started up from a 
doze. There was no one in the room but 
her married sister. “ I dreamed Death 
was in the room with me just now,” said 
she. “ And he had an old woman with 
him whom he called his Sister. She 
seemed to me to be giving my babies 
something : but what it was I don’t know. 
At first I thought it was a plaything; but 
now I think it was a sorrow. At 
least . . . . ” 

“ Dear! dear ! ” cried her sister, in 
alarm, as if she saw the spirit drifting 
beyond her ken. 

“ My babies ! ” whispered the mother. 

And presently she was “ at rest.” 

* * * * 

Rick and Dick grew up somehow. 


Drolls from Shadow land. 123 

Though motherless and fatherless they 
were not quite friendless, and in the 
struggle for existence they held their own 
and kept alive. 

A more agreeable and cheerful 
fellow than Dick it would have been 
impossible to find, according to his com¬ 
panions. He seemed dowered with a 
disposition so equable and contented that 
it was a pleasure to be with him : and he 
radiated cheerfulness like a fire. More¬ 
over, he was in thorough harmony with 
his surroundings. He found fault with 
nothing in the structure of society, and 
desired no change either in laws or 
institutions: everything was ordered 
wisely, and was ordered for the best. In 
fact, he was the spirit of Content personi¬ 
fied : and much patting on the back did 
he get for his reward. 


124 Drolls from Shadowland. 

“We must give him a helping hand, 
must push him forward, you know,” said 
the Community, beaming on its cheerful 
young champion. 

And Dick took the “ pushing forward ” 
with admirable self-composure, and cer¬ 
tainly seemed to deserve all he got. 

As for Rick, the Community would 
have nothing to do with him. He was 
not quite an out-and-out pessimist, it was 
true; but he seemed to look on the 
Community as a most clumsily-articulated 
creature—a thing of shreds and patches, 
and the Cheap Jack of shams. He was 
always putting his finger on this spot or 
that; hinting that here there was a weak¬ 
ness, and there .... something worse. 
Every advanced thinker, and the majority 
of theorists, could count on finding a 
sympathetic listener in him : and not in- 


Drolls from Shadow land. 125 

frequently they found in him an advocate 
also ; such an arrant anti-optimist was the 
pestilent fellow. As if Civilization, after 
thousands of years of travail, had produced 
nothing better than a clumsy abortion 
with the claws of an animal and the tastes 
of Jack-an-ape ! Why, the man must be 
mad, to have such irregular fancies ! It 
was a pity laws against opinions were not 
oftener put in force : then—a click of the 
guillotine, and the world would have 
peace! 

Rick listened grimly, and made a note 
of the imagery. “You will remember it 
better in black and white,” said he. 

* * * * 

In the course of years Dick became a 
churchwarden and a philanthropist (he 
took the infection very mildly and in its 
most agreeable form), and a highly 


126 Drolls from Shadowland. 

respected gambler on, or rather member 
of, the Stock Exchange. He was also 
joined “in the bands of holy matrimony ” 
to a buxom young widow who was left- 
handedly connected with The Aristocracy 
Itself! The lady brought him a most 
desirable fortune to start with, and after 
some years made him a present of twins : 
so that Dick was now a notable man among 
his acquaintances, and had the ambition to 
become a bigger man still, by-and-by: a 
Common Councilman certainly, and an 
Alderman perhaps ! 

Meanwhile Rick had developed into a 
musty savant: a fellow whose tastes, if you 
might call them such, were of the most 
outre order—in advance of everything that 
was sober, respectable, and conventional; 
and in aggressive alliance with everything 
that was disturbing, and that was 


Drolls from Shadow land. 127 

maliciously and wickedly critical (said the 
saints). 

“ The kernel of his life is unhealthy,” 
said his brother : “ it has a deadly fungus 
growing in it, I am afraid.” 

“ The fungus of discontent, dear 
friend,” said the clergyman. 

“I am afraid so,” said Dick, with a 
prodigious great sigh. “Still, we must 
none the less pray for him unceasingly : 
for prayer availeth much, as we know.” 

The clergyman dramatically clasped his 
white hands together, looking up as one 
who speechlessly admires. 

* * * * 

Rick sat musing in his gloomy study: 
thinking of the ladder he had climbed, and 
of the scenery of his life that now stretched 
out like a map before him. 

Presently the study door opened softly, 


128 Drolls from Shadowland. 

and a Figure came in and took a chair at 
his side. 

“ You have come, then ! ” said Rick. 
“ I thought your coming must be near.” 
“ Shall we start ? ” asked the Figure. 

“ I am ready,” answered Rick. 

And they passed out together into the 
deep black night. 

“ Come, take my arm : we will call 
together for your brother.” 

“ He has so much to make him happy ! 
There are the little ones and his wife ! 
Could you not delay a little ? ” 

“ He must come with us to-night.” 

Dick was attending a banquet which 
was being given in his honour to celebrate 
his recent election as a Common Council¬ 
man, and the lust of life was in his every 
vein. But in the act of responding to the 
toast of the evening he was suddenly 




Drolls from Shadowland. 129 

attacked by a fit of apoplexy. He 
staggered, and fell back—and they per¬ 
ceived that he was dead. 

* * * * 

It was a bleak and a very depressing 
journey to pass nakedly and alone from 
the warm, well-lighted, and flattering 
banquet, and, most of all, from the com¬ 
fortable and familiar earth, up to the 
Doom’s-man and the Bar beside the Gates. 
If he could only have had a friend or two 
at his side! 

On the way up, just as he was nearing 
the gates, Dick overtook Rick, who was a 
little way ahead of him. 

“ Come, let us go up together,” said 
Rick. 

At the gates, however, Dick began to 
grow uneasy. His brother’s reputation on 
earth among “ the godly ” was a curiously 

K 


130 Drolls from Shadowland. 

unwelcome memory to Dick now the Bar 
was so near and the Doom’s-man was in 
sight. 

“ You go first,” said Dick to his brother; 
falling behind as if to dissociate himself 
from him. 

Rick passed the gate and stood 
silently at the Bar. 

“ Place the brothers side by side,” said 
the Doom’s-man sternly. 

“ If you please,” began Dick, stumbling 
in his speech, so afraid was he of being 
confounded in the judgment of his 
brother; “ If you please . ” 

Said the Doom’s-man: “ Let the 
Advocates state the case.” 

The Black-robed Advocate claimed 
Rick boldly. The verdict of Rick’s fellow- 
citizens, he asserted, was emphatic on the 
point that Rick was legitimately his. 


Drolls from Shadow land. 131 

And he went with the majority, and 
claimed a verdict accordingly. 

The White-robed Advocate advanced, 
more hesitatingly, that Dick presumably 
should go with him. The Community, he 
averred, had long ago decided that only 
in this way would justice have its due. 

The Doom’s-man’s verdict was simpli¬ 
city itself. 

A nature so contented, and so little 
given to fault-finding, would be the typical 
one for the Black Advocate’s household, 
said the Doom’s-man, humorously con¬ 
templating Dick. “ Take him away with 
you,” said he to the Black Advocate: 
“ the man will give you no trouble, as you 
know. 

“ But that restless, fault-finding fellow 
there,” and he indicated Rick with a 
movement of his forefinger, “it would 


k 2 


132 Drolls from Shadow land. 

need a faultless abode like yours to satisfy 
him,” and he signed to the silent White 
Advocate at his side. “ Take him, he is 
yours,” said the Doom’s-man solemnly. 

And with that the Advocates departed 
with their awards. 


FRIEND OR FOE? 






FRIEND OR FOE? 


I. 

Sir Edward lay back lazily in his chair, 
with a letter in a woman’s handwriting 
crumpled at his feet. 

“ She must make the best of it now,” 
said he, gazing at the fire. “ She is not 
worse off than others, come to that.” And 
he lolled among the cushions, gazing into 
the fire, with a hard and cruel look on his 
countenance, on which the stamp of 
sensuality was unmistakably impressed. 

It was a large and luxuriously-furnished 
apartment, with everything so arranged as 


136 Drolls from Shadowland. 

to minister to the senses and afford them 
the fullest gratification which suggestions 
could impart. 

But Sir Edward, lolling by the fire this 
evening, experienced little satisfaction in 
his luxurious surroundings : the eroding 
tooth of thought they could no way quiet; 
and it was the irritation of this that he 
most desired to have allayed. 

He lighted a cigar, and began to smoke 
vigorously, leaning back the while and 
contemplating the smoke-clouds that 
drifted round in swirling folds and spirals, 
an occasional ring mounting airily over 
all. 

Smoking away steadily, cigar after cigar 
—for he was an insatiable smoker as he was 
insatiable in everything — Sir Edward 
seemed presently to be almost hidden 
among the smoke-wreaths, which had now 


Drolls from Shadowland. 137 

thickened in the room with unexampled 
rapidity. 

At first he felt inclined to ring for a 
servant and have the windows opened to 
let in a breath of air, but there was a 
certain amount of interest in watching the 
floating veils of smoke; and, besides, in the 
mere act of idly watching these he could 
let certain vivid tableaux, with which 
Memory was amusing him, drift beyond 
the range of his attention, he hoped. So 
he lay back, letting the smoke thicken in 
the atmosphere, while he followed the 
fantastic wreaths lazily with his eyes. 

It was almost as if he were dozing as he 
lay there; for he could have sworn that 
in the chair on the opposite side of the 
fireplace he perceived a grey old fogey 
reclining among the cushions, yet with deep- 
sunken eyes fixed watchfully on his face. 


138 Drolls from Shadowland. 

It was really absurd to have an utter 
stranger intrude his company on him in 
this unceremonious manner, and Sir 
Edward felt inclined to question him 
sharply, and, if need be, have him turned 
out neck and crop. 

But instead of taking up the intended 
role of inquisitor, he found himself 
reduced ignominiously to the role of the 
questioned one. 

“ Where were you thinking of going to¬ 
night ? ” asked the Visitor. “ To the 
theatre, or the opera, or to that ‘ private 
club ’ we know of ? ” And the Visitor 
looked at him with a glance of quiet 
intelligence which Sir Edward somehow 
felt powerless to resent. 

“ I was thinking . . . . ” 

“ Of going with me ? Quite right! ” 
replied the Visitor. “ With me you shall 


Drolls from Shadowland. 139 

go: unless we can come to terms together. 
In which case, possibly, I may leave you 
behind for a time” 

Sir Edward ceased to smoke : and his 
hands trembled on his knees. 

But he made no movement, and uttered 
no protest. Before the glance of his 
visitor he quailed and was dumb. 

“ Ruth Medwin, I presume, must bear 
her disgrace as best she can? You will 
neither recognize her, nor make her an 
allowance, I understand.” 

“ I think I have changed my mind . . .” 

“ Too late,” said the Visitor. “ After 
having seen me you can change your mind 
no more.” 

Sir Edward lay motionless among the 
cushions of his chair. 

“ I should like .... if you will allow 
me . . . . ” he began feebly. 


140 Drolls from Shctdowland. 

“ I can allow you only one choice : and 
that a peremptory one. Will you go with 
me instantly—I think you know me—or 
shall I call for you again on any terms I 
care to fix ? ” 

“Will your terms be as pitiless . . . 

“ You shall hear them, if you please.” 

Sir Edward sank deeper among the 
soft cushions : his whole life concentrated 
in the watchful stare with which he fixed 
his eyes on his visitor’s face. 

“ Shall I take you with me now to 
undergo your punishment—and, I need 
scarcely tell you, it will not be a light one 
—or would you prefer a delay before you 
accompany me : a period of expiation, in 
some form I may decide on, with a hope 
of a reduction in your punishment at the 
end ? ” 

“ A delay—a, period of expiation, for 
God’s sake ! ” . 


Drolls from Shadowland. 141 


“ You are certain you prefer it ? ” 

“ I implore it! I entreat it! For God’s 
sake, grant me a respite ! ” 

“Be it so.” 


II. 

The soul that had been Sir Edward’s 
sickened with disgust. 

It was located in the body of a miser¬ 
able cab-horse; one of the sorriest hacks 
in the East End of London, and practically 
fit only for the knacker, one would have 
said. 

It was a life the human soul found 
inexpressibly hateful. If this were 
expiation, it was in a purgatory indeed. 
But in a purgatory of filth and of disgusting 
sensations, instead of in a torturing 
purgatory of fire. 


142 Drolls from Shadowland. 

To be lashed with the whip, and galled 
excruciatingly with the harness; to have 
the bit between the teeth, or tugging at the 
jaws unmercifully; and to have the blinkers 
ever blotting out the vision of the world : 
to strain every sinew, and have the service 
accepted thanklessly; to be tortured with 
discomfort, and to work absolutely without 
reward—it was a life devoid of even the 
meanest compensations : loathsome, and 
in every way abhorrent to thought. 

The horses, and other animals he met 
in the streets, he might have communicated 
with in some way or other, but his driver 
—a drunken, quarrelsome fellow — was 
always tugging at the bit or brandishing 
the whip; and if the poor animal even tried 
to turn his head, he was belaboured as 
brutally as if he had swerved or fallen 
asleep. 


Drolls from Shadow land. 143 

There was no chance even of rubbing 
noses at the drinking-troughs, or of laying 
his head on the neck of a companion at 
the stand. And whatever might be taking 
place in the streets through which he 
was passing, he was debarred from bestow¬ 
ing on it even the most casual attention. 

His mental activity was ignored, or 
trampled on, with an indifference that was 
never once relaxed or relieved. 

His life was a horror unexampled in its 
profundity. The cruel debasement and 
defilement of it penetrated so deeply that 
he repented bitterly of the choice into 
which he had been betrayed. He would 
infinitely have preferred suffering among 
his equals in hell. 

A year of this life was as much as he 
could endure. One day he stumbled 
across a tram-line, and, falling, broke his 


144 Drolls from Shadowland. 

leg—hopelessly snapping the tendon, and 
otherwise injuring himself—and he was 
carted off to the knackers to receive his 
coup de grace. 

A moment or two before he was killed, 
the eyes of the animal lighted up with a 
strangely human expression—which was 
succeeded by a look of the most unappeas¬ 
able despair. 

Evidently he had again seen the grey 
old man. 

But the Visitor’s communication to him 
remained unrevealed, and it was probably- 
torturing him still when he ... . died ? 



THE FIELDS OF AMARANTH. 














THE FIELDS OF AMARANTH. 

“ I shall seek the fields of amaranth,” 
said the young man defiantly. “ And I 
shall find them,” added he, turning 
tenderly to his mother. “And when I 
have found them I will comeback for you, 
dear mother, and I will take you with me 
that we may dwell there in peace.” 

“ What do you know of peace, and why 
should you desire it ? ” asked the father, 
with a certain cold contempt in his tone. 
“ You have not yet lived ; and you have 
certainly not laboured. Rest is for those 
who have laboured and grown weary. In 


L 2 


148 Drolls from Shadowland. 

that rest that you desire you would 
have an empty mind for showman, and of 
its meagre entertainment you would tire as 
speedily as a child. Live first, and watch 
the puppets of memory play afterwards. 
The fields of amaranth will wait for you 
however long you live.” 

But the young man insisted : “ I want 
to find them now . And when I have 
found them I will come for you, mother, 
dear; and we will return to them together 
and be happy and at peace.” 

But the mother’s eyes were troubled with 
an inexplicable expression. “ It were 
better that you should wait till I come to 
you” she answered gently. “As come to 
you I surely shall—one day. But come 
not to fetch me .... if once you find the 
fields.” 

“ I surely shall come for you,” cried the 
youth. 


Drolls from Shadow land. 149 

“ No, no ! ” implored the mother. 

But he smiled on her, and was gone. 

It was a long journey, and a toilsome 
one, and the end of it the youth could 
neither learn of nor anticipate. 

The fields of amaranth ? Yes : all had 
heard of them. But no one knew any one 
who had ever found them. And, for 
themselves, they were content to know 
these waited for them somewhere. They 
had ties—they had businesses—they were 
content to live and wait. 

“ When I return from them, shall I give 
you tidings of them ? ” asked the young 
man, earnestly. 

“No, no!” They were vehement in 
their dissuasions that he should not: finally 
even fleeing from him in terror at the 
thought. 

And the young man mused perplexedly 


150 Drolls from Shadowland. 

as he walked on. “ Are there really fields 
of amaranth for those who can find them ? ” 
he asked of a wrinkled, white-haired way¬ 
farer. “ Or is it merely a bait, a delusion, 
and a lie ? ” 

“ Yes, surely, my son, these fields await 
us all: else life, at best, were a sorry game 
for most of us. It is there we shall rest 
and reap our reward.” 

“ But no one seems eager to set out for 
them and discover them.” 

“ No one ? ” quoth the old man, looking 
at him strangely : “ there are many ways of 
getting there: you have chosen only one. 
There are other roads, and crowded ones : 
though you know nothing of them yet.” 

The young man brushed past him hot 
with disdain. He was merely an old 
dotard : empty-minded like the rest. 

The lures of the highway were many 




Drolls from Shadowland. 151 

and formidable; but the young man turned 
aside from them impatiently. “I am 
bound for the fields of amaranth,” cried 
he haughtily : “when I return I will taste 
these good things you offer.” 

* Will he ever return ? ” whispered a girl 
to her mother. 

She had looked with eyes of love on the 
daring young wayfarer ; and a vague regret 
shivered through her as he passed on. 

“God only knows. But I doubt it,” 
said the mother. 

The girl hid her face in her apron and 
wept. 

But the young man had not overheard 
the whisper, and with head held high he 
pushed on along the road. 

And here were the fields of amaranth at 
last! He could see them smiling faintly 
on the other side of the valley. But they 


152 Drolls from Shadowland. 

had a strangely vague and unsubstantial 
look. One might almost have fancied he 
were looking at a mirage. 

And between the young wayfarer and 
the fields of amaranth the rugged hillside 
sloped abruptly : its foot being shrouded 
in a dense white mist. He could hear a 
river murmuring sullenly somewhere in the 
depths, but the mist hid the waters and he 
could only hear their moan. 

How far he had left the busy highway 
behind him ! He would like to take just 
one farewell glance at it. The fields 
beyond him seemed to waver deceptively 
in his eyes. One glance at the highway, 
with its booths and its faces, and his vigour, 
strangely waning, would surely be 
renewed. 

But as he turned and saw the dear 
familiar highway, along which he had 


Drolls from Shadowland . 153 

trudged so many weary miles, his heart 
went out in a yearning towards it, and 
he stretched out his arms to it, hungering 
for its life. 

So mighty was the fascination it now 
exercised over him, that he began to rush 
headlong down the hill towards it, eager 
to be once more mingling in its throng, 
and to once more feel its hum in his 
ears. 

At the foot of the hill he met the fair 
young girl whose eyes had erstwhile 
followed him so wistfully, and he flung 
himself into her arms sobbing violently. 

“The life here—you—I cannot part 
with them ! ” he cried passionately. And 
he shuddered: “ If the wish had come 
too late! ” 



I 















































THE COMEDY OF A SOUL. 










THE COMEDY OF A SOUL. 


“You are quite sure you will never change? 
will never desert me, or be untrue to me ? ” 

“ I am absolutely sure of it, my darling! ” 
he answered resolutely. “ Any pledge my 
sweet one desires I will give her freely,” 
added he, as he again kissed her passion¬ 
ately on the mouth. 

“ Would you leave me your soul in 
pawn ? ” asked the maiden, smiling at him 
bewitchingly with her deliciously red lips ; 
her cheeks dimpling and her brown eyes 
sparkling, and her heaving breasts but 
thinly hidden from his gaze. 


158 Drolls from Shadowland. 


“ Willingly ! And be glad to leave it 
in my darling’s custody ! ” And his lips 
hovered caressingly around her just- 
disclosed shoulder. 

“Very well, I will accept the pledge,” 
said she. 

He was beginning again to kiss her 
fondlingly. 

“You are a man of honour, are you 
not ? ” asked she; showing her even white 
teeth, and dimpling her rose-leaf cheeks 
temptingly. 

“ Certainly. I hope so.” 

“ Then let me have your soul.” 

“But that would mean death for me! 
Do you desire me to die, my love ? ” And 
a look of questioning wonder crept into 
his eyes. 

“ By no means! I have not been 
reared by a philosopher for nothing. 





Drolls from Shadowland. 159 

This crystal ball”—and she held out to 
him a tiny globe of crystal—“put your 
lips to it and pawn your soul to its keeping. 
I will warrant you, it will hold it as safely 
as I could.” 

He glanced at the tiny globe distrust¬ 
fully. 

“ Are you afraid ? Do you wish to with¬ 
draw from your word ? ” 

“ By no means.” 

“Then breathe against it, my love.” 
And she held the crystal ball temptingly 
towards him. “You can imagine it is my 
lips you are touching,” added she, with a 
light, coquettish laugh, leaning provoca¬ 
tively close to him. 

He took the crystal reluctantly, and 
breathed against it as she wished. 

“ Oh !” cried he suddenly, drawing back 
his lips. 


160 Drolls from Shadowland. 

She took the crystal globe from him and 
peered into it anxiously. Then cried, in 
a tone of triumph, “ Look ! there it is ” 

He was aware of something cloudy— 
vague and light as smoke—floating, as it 
were, in the core of the crystal. And sud¬ 
denly he felt a sense of want within him¬ 
self. 

She put the crystal in her bosom, and 
let it lie between her breasts. 

“ It is warm and pleasant there: you 
will never let it grow cold, will you ? ” 

“ Never! ” And she laughed ; dimp¬ 
ling rosily in her mirth. “ Now you can 
set off on your journey,” said the maiden. 

“ I have no wish now to leave your side,” 
he whispered meekly. 

“ This rose, that I have been wearing, 
you were wishing for just now. See! I 
toss it yonder! Fetch and keep it! ” 
cried the maiden. 



Drolls from Shadowland. 161 


He ran after it; groping for it where it 
had fallen in the grass. 

“Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! ” sounded all around 
him. It was as if the wood had suddenly 
grown vocal with cuckoos. 

He turned his head quickly. The 
maiden had disappeared. 

“ Why did I trust my soul to her 
keeping ? ” he wailed drearily. “ If she 
should lose it; or mislay it; or should 
even let it grow cold ! My love ! my love ! 
my love! ” he began calling. 

“ Cuckoo! cuckoo!” kept sounding 
across the grass. 

He ran hither and hither: he followed 
the woodland paths feverishly. 

At times he fancied he caught a glimpse 
of her vanishing garments ; of the sunlight 
glinting on her long gold tresses. Now he 
imagined he could hear her laughter 

M 


162 Drolls from Shadowland. 

echoing among the tree-trunks : and anon 
he even fancied he could hear her singing. 
But he pursued her down the long green 
vistas in vain. 

He sat down beneath a tree and clasped 
his hands drearily. “ What a fool I was 
to trust my soul to her! ” he wailed. 

And at that moment he was aware of a 
ragged pedlar coming along the forest 
glades, and whistling as he came. 

“ Ho! young man! you look 
melancholy,” quoth the pedlar. “What 
d’ye lack ? A philtre to make your sweet¬ 
heart love you ? Ribbons for a lady ? A 
collar for your hound ? ” 

“ I want a soul,” said the young man, 
glancing at him hungrily. 

“ A common want! ” quoth the pedlar, 
grinning broadly. “ But here in my pack 
I have souls in plenty. Dip in your hand 
and take one boldly! ” 


Drolls from Shadowland. 163 

“ I should like to choose.” 

“ It is take it, or leave it. I allow no 
choice. I am offering you a gift.” 

The pedlar laid his half-open pack on 
the grass. 

“ Dip in your hand and take one, if you 
will.” 

The young man dipped in his hand at a 
venture, and drew out one—the soul of an 
ape. 

“ Not that! I will not have that! ” cried 
he. 

“ Then you will have none,” said the 
pedlar, dropping the soul in his pack 
again. “If the great Soul Maker, who 
manufactures them by the million, allows 
neither picking nor choosing, beyond the 
casual dip of chance, do you think that a 
mere pedlar in souls, like myself, can do 
business on a basis which he has found 


M 2 



164 Drolls from Shadowland. 

unprofitable ? Pooh, man, get back your 
soul if you can , or else you may do without 
one, as far as I am concerned.” And off 
strolled the pedlar, whistling as he went. 

The young man leaned his head 
dejectedly on his hand. 

“ How can I get back my soul ? ” he 
moaned. 

“ Why not live without one ? ” croaked 
a voice above his shoulder. 

He looked up, and saw a sooty old 
raven peering down at him. 

“ Live without a soul! You’ll never 
miss it,” croaked the raven. 

“ Can I ? ” cried the young man : 
amazed, yet hopeful. 

“ Can I?” croaked the raven, mock¬ 
ingly echoing him. “ Can I? Of course 
you can, young fool! ” 

“ Then I will! ” exclaimed the young 
man, starting to his feet. 


Drolls from Shadowland. 165 

“That’s right,” croaked the raven. 
“ You’re the right sort —you are ! ” 

“ A capital idea that! ” quoth the young 
man, cheerfully. 

He looked up, but the raven had 
hopped away among the branches. 

“Well, at any rate, his hint was well 
meant, and I’ll follow it ! ” quoth the 
young man, striding out boldly towards the 
houses which he could just see glimmer¬ 
ing beyond the edge of the wood. 

* * * * 

“ Ugh ! How ugly and dirty it has 
become! ” quoth the maiden, gazing in 
the crystal at the soul which she had 
coveted and stolen. “I will throw it 
away, it no longer amuses me ! ” 

And she threw it from her into the 
mire of the city : and the wheels and the 
feet rapidly buried it in the mud. 


166 Drolls from Shadoivland. 

The grey-haired Bishop looked “ so 
beautiful” in his coffin, that the deaconesses 
and the dear good sisters longed to kiss 
him. 

“ None of ’em ever found out that you 
wanted a soul,” croaked the raven, who 
sat perched on the window-sill, blinking in 
the sunshine. 

But there was no response to this : for 
how can a dead man talk ? 


THE END. 


Henderson^ Spalding, Ltd ., Mary lebone Lane, Lo?idon , W. 





























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